About North Star Admissions Consulting

About North Star Admissions ConsultingNSAdmin2015-04-01T09:01:22+00:00

Learn more about North Star Admissions Consulting

I’m very fortunate to do what I do – helping people take the next critical step in their education and career.

I help business school, college, medical school, law school and PhD and Master’s candidates identify and gain admission to their best fit schools. My clients and I work closely together to better understand their individual strengths and weaknesses, what makes them unique and how to strategically communicate this information to admissions teams through powerful applications.

In order to help my clients succeed I leverage more than a decade of admissions experience, which includes my time as the Associate Director of Admissions at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where I was the lead Diversity Recruiter, as a member of Tuck’s admissions committee and as a member of Dartmouth’s undergraduate admissions selection team. In addition, I served on the Board of Trustees for the Consortium for Graduate School Management and chaired the organization’s Executive Committee.

During my time in admissions, I have adjudicated thousands of applications and conducted hundreds of interviews, consulting about scholarship awards, helping to write essay and recommendation questions, training interviewers, and meeting and advising hundreds of candidates.

Schools use complex criteria to make admissions decisions, and while the details may vary from school to school, the basic components are the same. All schools are looking for multifaceted candidates who will contribute and excel. I understand why schools ask the questions they do, whom to choose as your recommenders, what anecdotes to share, how to articulate your goals, how to address areas of concern, and how to shine in interviews.

Through our collaboration, you can feel confident that you are doing all you can to gain admission to the best possible institution.

Karen Marks

President & FounderNorth Star Admissions Consulting

Since founding North Star Admissions Consulting, I have helped applicants earn more than 3.6 million dollars in scholarships. My clients have matriculated to the nation’s top schools, including:

Stanford

Harvard

Dartmouth

Yale

MIT

Cornell

Columbia

Northwestern

the University of Chicago

the University of Michigan

the University of Pennsylvania

The University of North Carolina

Wellesley

Duke

Georgetown

New York University

The University of Virginia

Previously, I was a civil rights attorney working for the ACLU, specializing in race and gender discrimination litigation. I hold a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University and a Juris Doctorate from the George Washington University School of Law.

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